


It's Only Make Believe

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-09 20:24:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7815823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo Fitz might be the worst fake boyfriend Jemma Simmons has ever encountered. (Not that she's encountered many.) But just maybe, she might like him anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. No, Jemma Simmons Does Not Have a Boyfriend

“How did it go?” Daisy eagerly spun around at the sound of Jemma's key in the lock, propping her head on top of the couch and looking at Jemma like she expected to hear that her roommate had just run her lottery.

“Do we still have tequila left over from Cinco de Mayo?” Jemma kicked off her heels hard enough to send one spinning across the room and let herself slump down to the carpet. The couch was too far and maybe if she sat and looked sad enough, Daisy would just bring the tequila to her. 

“Unfortunately, we drank all the tequila trying to make frozen margaritas. But I'm pretty sure we still have vodka!” Daisy said triumphantly. “Maybe rum. Do you think it's a bad idea to mix them?”

“I think it sounds like a great idea. Throw me the vodka?” Jemma asked and held both her arms up weakly. Maybe if she drank enough, she could forget the whole night. Or better yet, forget that she had ever thought agreeing to let her friends set her up was a good idea. Or, even better, maybe she could just forget about dating entirely and go off and be a cat-owning spinster aunt. Jemma thought she'd make a quite good spinster aunt.

“That bad?” Daisy asked with a wince and crossed to sit across from Jemma.

Jemma sighed and wondered where to start. Maybe with the fact that he'd shown up fifteen minutes late, wearing a rumpled suit jacket over a New York Yankees t-shirt, and subjected both of them to death glares from the hostess at the fancy fusion restaurant he'd insisted on going to? Or maybe the way he'd ordered her drink and appetizers for her? Or maybe his shrug as he said that he “wasn't really into that science fiction stuff anyway”? Or, just maybe, how he'd monopolized the conversation, droned on about his job working in finance while neglecting to ask her any questions about her own life, nearly forgotten her name, and then had the gall to ask if she wanted to come back to his place afterward? (She'd bribed the kitchen staff into letting her slip out the back in the end.)

Daisy's eyes widened as Jemma went on and as soon as Jemma finished, she got up, marched straight over to the kitchen, and brought the bottle of vodka back with her. “Do you want pizza too? I'm pretty sure I can talk the guy who takes orders into giving us extra toppings for free. And you should probably eat something to absorb all the alcohol that's about to go into your system,” Daisy added quickly as Jemma tilted the bottle straight back and took a swig.

“Mushrooms, please. With a side of cheesy garlic bread,” Jemma said and tipped her head back against the wall. Her dating life had always been a bit of a mess, from the drunken college hookup who had broken his wrist trying to make a quick escape from her dorm room window to the long-term boyfriend who'd broken up with her to go teach yoga at a resort in Bali to the fans who had attempted to track her down and take her out to dinner once her science fiction saga had hit the bestseller lists. But it had gone from bad to worse once everyone in the neighborhood became invested in it.

“So how was your date last night, Jemma?” Phil Coulson, the owner of The Playground Diner, beamed down at her as he set a plate of pancakes down on their table. Since Jemma and Daisy had first moved in a year and a half ago, they'd gone to Phil's nearly every Sunday for brunch and he insisted on always coming over to say hello to them himself.

“It, ah...it didn't go well,” Jemma said and took a long sip of tea to avoid saying anything else.

“He insulted her books,” Daisy said indignantly around a mouthful of bacon and eggs.

“What was his name again?” Phil asked casually. Too casually. Jemma shot Daisy a glare before the other woman could tell him anything. Now Phil specialized in making stellar eggs benedict and French toast that people would line up for hours for but if anyone asked him about what he'd done before the diner, he just shrugged and expertly deflected the question. Not to mention the fact that Daisy swore she'd once seen multi-millionaire Tony Stark having breakfast at the diner. No date, no matter how bad, deserved to have the wrath of a former FBI (CIA? NSA? Interpol? Whatever would win her the long-standing betting pool she and Daisy had going?) agent come down upon them.

“It doesn't matter. Because now I have pancakes,” Jemma told him, spearing another bite with her fork as proof and attempting to smile through her blinding headache. “And tea and a perfectly lovely morning. Honestly, Phil, don't worry about me.”

“You know, there's this guy that comes through about every Wednesday for breakfast after his run. Works for Veterans Affairs, has a big chocolate Lab, very nice, always playing the third wheel to his blond friend and that ballerina--” Phil said hopefully.

“No,” Jemma said firmly. “No one is allowed to set me up ever again.”

The problem was that, somewhere along the way, her entire neighborhood had become invested in her dating life. Daisy's boyfriend Trip, med student by day and barista by night, sneaked her muffins whenever she had another bad date. Her friend Bobbi, who owned the comic book store, was constantly suggesting double dates consisting of Bobbi, Bobbi's hapless boyfriend Hunter, Jemma, and the most attractive single guy who'd happened to wander into the store that week. Her personal trainer May always brought out the bigger punching bags after Jemma had had a bad date. Even Mack, the local mechanic who'd fixed her car no less than eight times, had casually advised her to find a guy who wouldn't turn and run at the sight of her car's engine. 

It was sweet, of course. They only asked (and asked and asked and asked) because they cared. But some days, all Jemma wanted was to scream at them to shut up at the top of her lungs. Not that it would have worked. Phil would have just shown his disapproval by withholding extra pancakes, Bobbi would have given her a hug and patted her on the head, and May...the thought of anyone intimidating May was laughable. The only person that she'd be able to frighten was Hunter and that barely counted. 

It took two more disastrous dates for Jemma to come up with a solution. She'd simply invent a boyfriend. Smart, kind, funny, handsome, well read, in the possession of a working knowledge of recent science fiction releases...She'd start by dropping a few casual hints, dashing out the door without telling Skye where she was going, smiling stupidly down at her phone and then when they asked her if she was seeing anyone, she'd find someone to play the part. Starving actors were a dime a dozen, after all. 

To do it properly, however, Jemma couldn't do it all on her own. She needed another finely honed scientific mind (and maybe one devious one). So she waited until Daisy was spending the night at Trip's and invited her college roommate over. 

“Jane,” she asked, trying to sound casual. “How would I go about finding a starving actor to play my boyfriend?”

“Do they have to be starving? I could do research to find the best kind of actor for you.” Jane Foster, renowned astrophysicist, author of groundbreaking theories, and possessor of one very handsome accidental Norwegian boyfriend, offered absently and took another bite of a Pop Tart. Jane was widely expected to win a Nobel prize in the next few years. She was also wearing flannel pajamas with sushi on them. Perhaps those two facts explained why she was permanently placed in Jemma's list of her top five favorite people.

“I'm just afraid that if I put an ad online, I would end up accidentally hiring an escort,” Jemma whispered and felt her cheeks flush. “Maybe I could call a casting agency and pretend that it was for a movie?”

“You'd get sued by Equity,” Darcy's voice said from the phone resting on the table. Jane had speed dialed her former intern the moment that Jemma had pulled out two bottles of wine and greeted Jane with a desperate look that had only previously made an appearance during finals. “I dated an actor once. Equity lawsuits are some scary shit.”

“What if I asked one of Thor's friends to do it? They're very large but very nice. Norwegians are very understanding about being hit with cars, you know,” Jane said cheerfully and slid the box of Pop Tarts across the table to Jemma. 

“I passed my drivers' test with flying colors, thank you.” Jemma could parallel park perfectly. Her car just liked to test her. Usually on Monday mornings when she was running late to work.

“I don't think we should tell him about Jemma's car until later,” Darcy interjected. “We don't want to scare him off if he—Wait, hang on.” There was a rustling in the background and the sound of a door swinging open. “Bucky says to try going on a date with Phil's guy.”

“Bucky is being bribed by Phil with bacon to say that,” Jemma pointed out. “And the point is to not have anyone be involved in my dating life. No suggestions, no set-ups, no offers to go beat men up in the middle of the night. If someone wins, they'll gloat about it forever.”

“Why don't we ask one of the professors in Jane's department?” Darcy asked. “No amateur actors, no possible gigolos, just a starving academic who hasn't gotten tenure yet. Remember what's-his-name, Jane? The Scottish one?”

“There aren't any Scottish professors in my department. Astronomy's filled with old men who eat all the cheese and crackers at department meetings,” Jane said innocently.

“I meant in the _science_ department.” Jane opened her mouth, presumably to point out that science wasn't a department, and Darcy barrelled right over her. “You remember, don't you—the one we were talking about earlier? The one working on that non-lethal weapon with the silly name? Leo Fitz?”

“Fitz. Right. Yes. Fitz!” Jane blinked, refocusing. “Perfect fake boyfriend material.” And, a bottle and a half of wine later, that was that. Jemma had a date with Professor Leopold Fitz on Saturday night at seven o'clock. She reasoned that at the very least, unlike any of her real boyfriends, she'd get to pick the place for dinner. Maybe if she got really lucky, she'd even get to pick dessert. 

 

Jemma was early. Fitz was not, racing up in front of the restaurant out of breath and looking remarkably dusty while he gasped out a long series of apologies about a centrifuge, a pastrami sandwich, and a late bus. She was unsure how they all related to one another or even if she particularly wanted to find out so instead Jemma just looked up at him, considering. She'd steeled herself for the worst--bad breath, cringe-worthy physics puns, receding hairline—and instead she found herself met with sandy hair, blue eyes, and an intriguing shadow of stubble lingering around his jawline. The positives stopped there.

She'd have to do something about the outfit (scuffed Converse, ordinary jeans, slightly wrinkled button-down shirt) and maybe about the hair. He wasn't very tall, he definitely had at least one candy bar stuffed into the pocket of his jeans, and the watch on his wrist looked suspiciously like something of his own design that was likely to explode at any moment. Not at all her usual type—in fact, she was ready to throw her hands up in exasperation when he began describing the experiment and it was nearly impossible for her to resist the urge to flatten his hair when he ran his hands through it and made it stick straight up. Still, she was very nearly charmed by how something about the way he let her pick a table near the window so they could people-watch and made a silly pun about the elephant statues decorating the restaurant that made her smile in spite of herself. If she spun the world a degree and a half to the left, tilting everything slightly out of joint, the idea of him and her was almost believable. So she tossed her hair back over one shoulder, met his bad pun with one of her own, and resolved to steal all of Jane's Pop-Tarts if this didn't work out.

“It won't work, you know,” he said frankly after they sat down at their table. “If you're trying to make someone jealous with me. I don't, ah, I'm not the kind to really make someone green with envy. Or to knock an ex-boyfriend out with one punch.”

“They're jealous already,” Jemma informed him, tilting her chin up and trying to sound like someone carefree and confident, someone who always did the breaking up rather than constantly finding themselves being broken up with. “And I can throw my own punches.”

“Why then? I mean, you're...you're too pretty to need a fake boyfriend,” he blurted out and met her gaze despite the blush spreading down his neck and streaking the tips of his ears. 

“I...uh, thank you.”Much to her horror, Jemma found herself blushing too. It was nice, that was all, the small secret warmth of knowing someone thought she was pretty, even though she'd dressed casually for the date, just dark jeans and a lacy dark green top after a lengthy debate over the phone with Jane and Darcy. (Normally she would have asked Daisy for advice but she was still trying to be cryptic about her evening plans, so she'd sprinted out the door with a few vague lines about meeting a friend for dinner. Daisy hadn't believed her at all, which was good.)

Then he promptly ruined it by informing her that he wasn't good with families either. “I'm very good at eating pie, though,” he said cheerfully. “If you want to make this last through Thanksgiving. All Jane told me was that one of her best friends needed a fake boyfriend and Darcy would ensure I never got prime lab time again if I didn't do it.”

“My friends won't stop trying to set me up. They mean well but they just...everything they set up seems to go wrong and then they try to comfort me and then they try to set me up again and I just...I'm tired of it all,” she admitted. “So I pretend to date you, get a few months of peace and quiet, and then pretend that you moved to Canada or something like that.”

“Canada's too close. Better make it Australia. They've got some fascinating species in Australia too—I'm working on a project with Komodo dragon venom right now,” he said, face lighting up. “In collaboration with the biology department, of course, bloody useless lot that they are. All fruit flies and frogs and leaving bits of their samples next to other people's lunches.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience? I was very nearly a biology major in college, you know,” Jemma said and took a sip of her Thai iced tea, eyes narrowed and waiting to see what he would do.

“Lucky escape, then. What do you do now?”

“I write books, actually. Science fiction.” Only 'writing books' had never seemed to be the right word to sum up what she did. Writing wasn't something that she did from nine to five, in an orderly office, a part of her life that she could leave behind her or tuck into a briefcase and be done with for the day. The words she wrote spilled over from her laptop screen and rushed across her floors, drowning her entire apartment in metaphors and inciting incidents. Some days, she'd stay up until three in the morning trying to bang out one and a half pages and other days she'd get all her edits in by noon and spend the afternoon lying on the couch reading the galleys she'd been sent and eating the peanut-butter filled pretzels that she kept promising herself she'd stop buying. She'd stop in the middle of ordering lunch to scribble an idea or a line of dialogue down on a paper napkin or painstakingly research what a world without nitrogen might be like, only to scrap the idea completely two days later. And she may have been a writer, but she never had the words to describe exactly what writing felt like. Most times she gave up on explaining her work before she even started but when Fitz asked her what her latest book was about, she found herself telling him all about the research she'd done and the plot charts she'd pinned up to her cork board. And then telling him some more.

He asked endless questions, he argued with her about the viability of various spaceship designs, he launched into a spirited debate with her over Isaac Asimov, and Jemma wasn't sure if she wanted to throw one of her chopsticks at him or talk to him some more. Then he'd lean forward, elbows up on the table and eyes bright and curious, and just listen and somehow she'd keep on talking.

They talked through crispy imperial rolls, chive pancakes, yellow curry, pad Thai, and green tea cheesecake and when they finally paid the check, after a series of threatening glares from their waiter, they lingered on the steps outside the restaurant. Fitz's hair didn't look nearly as messy under the streetlights, she thought, and even the watch he was wearing looked significantly less hazardous.

“So did I pass the audition?” Fitz bounced on the balls of his feet, running one hand through his hair and making it stick up even more as he waited for her response.

“I think you did. You pretend to be my boyfriend, I'll owe you several favors to be specified at a later date and at least three nice dinners, and everyone's happy,” she said with a confidence she didn't feel. Fitz wasn't exactly the ideal candidate but surely that was fixable? And the benefits far outweighed the downsides of spending a few weeks fixing up one grumpy engineer. She could already picture it: brunch at the Playground, Phil bringing them extra pancakes, not a single inquiry about her dating life in sight. “I'll see you Wednesday for lunch at the Belgian place downtown.”

“We're having lunch on Wednesday?”

“Of course. It'll be our second date.”


	2. The Four-Step Plan to Having a Fake Boyfriend

Jemma released the information that she was dating someone new in waves. She started with Daisy, the person who would be both the nosiest about Jemma's personal life and the hardest to convince of the details. Step one: check her phone more often than usual, blushing, giggling, and surreptitiously covering the screen when Daisy tried to peek over her shoulder. Step two: spend unusual amounts of time preparing for ambiguous weekend plans and come home grinning to herself. Step three: order new lingerie online and arrange for it to be delivered at a time when Daisy would be sure to be home to bring it in.

Jemma returned from a well-timed grocery shop to find Daisy sitting on the couch with Jemma's package from Adore Me sitting unopened on her lap and a massive smirk on her face. “Anything you want to tell me?” Daisy asked. “Maybe something involving a certain cute Scottish guy Trip saw you getting coffee with?”

“I was going to tell you. Honestly!” Jemma protested when Daisy gave her a dubious look. “It's very new, that's all, and I wasn't sure if there was even going to be anything to tell you in the first place. It could have flamed out spectacularly on the first date. Still could, as a matter of fact. Just come crashing down in a tumble of unanswered phone calls and--”

“Do you know that you're blushing?” Daisy cut her off, smirking, and tossed the package to her. Jemma promptly dropped it, still strangely flustered. “Bright pink.”

“I am not! Look, he's just--” Jemma stopped, searching for the right words to summon up Fitz. She'd prepared a whole back story, grilled him on relevant details of his life, and even written down a list of handy phrases to use if someone asked her about her new boyfriend, such as “accomplished engineer” and “grumpy Scotsman”. But none of them seemed quite right. 

“He's new. And different. And I'm not quite sure what to do with that,” Jemma said slowly and hoped that her explanation would pass muster. Because Fitz _was_ different from the other boys she'd dated, a long (medium-length, really) string of nicely muscled men who looked like all the photos she'd clipped out of magazines when she was sixteen and who always charmed her on the first date and disappointed her on the second. On her own, she never would have picked him. Not a chance of it.

“Different how?” Daisy tucked her legs beneath her on the couch and propped her chin on one hand, considering Jemma. “You seem different. Nervous...but not. No list of conversational topics tucked into your purse.”

“That was one time!” Really, they'd been on a notepad in her lap under the table as she steered the conversation from baseball to Indian food to the weather on yet another dismal date. It had been a necessary, if embarrassing, measure.

“So do you have photos? Or do I actually get to meet this one instead of awkwardly averting my eyes from him as he stumbles around our kitchen in the morning and tries to break our coffeemaker?” Daisy had a sixth sense for whenever one of Jemma's boyfriends stayed over and even worse, for the precise moment when Jemma and her date would be at their most awkward. She'd witnessed hot coffee being spilled all over Jemma's brand-new robe, pancakes landing on the floor from one well-intentioned and poorly executed attempt at making breakfast, and, worst of all, a guy sneaking out at three am after Jemma had fallen asleep. 

“You might get to meet him. If you and Trip want to see the new Star Trek movie with us,” Jemma offered before she could think better of it. If she and Fitz could fool Daisy, after all, they'd be able to fool anyone. 

“Wait, seriously? We get to meet him? Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure,” Jemma lied. As soon as Daisy left for her shift at the Apple Store, she dove for her notebook and phone, called Jane, and started making a list. If she and Fitz were going to convince Daisy that they were really dating, she'd have to come up with a five-step plan. 

Step 1: Improve Fitz's wardrobe. 

“Try on the tie,” Jemma ordered. Fitz didn't teach on Thursday afternoons, so she'd decided to dedicate her entire afternoon to dressing him properly. All of her previous boyfriends had been well-dressed, from the top of their expensive haircuts down to their leather loafers, and clearly she had to keep up her streak.

“No one wears ties to the movies,” Fitz said and grimaced at his reflection in the mirror. “I don't even wear ties to work.”

“That's just because your departmental dress code is lax,” Jemma informed him. Fitz frowned at her, undid the tie, and launched into a lecture about all the different ways that wearing a tie could get him killed in the engineering labs, complete with graphic examples. By the time they were done arguing, there was a pile of discarded ties on the floor, they had nearly been kicked out of the store, Fitz had rejected every shirt she had shown him...and Jemma's heart was racing in a way that wasn't entirely unpleasant.

Step #2: Build the background details of their relationship.  
Fitz was sprawled across her couch and looking suspiciously comfortable there. Jemma threw a pen at him.

“I don't see why it matters where we met. Just say you found me on Tinder or something,” he shrugged. “Or tell them how we really met, through Jane and Darcy. They told me about you all the time anyway.”

“Really? What did they say?”

“Nothing much,” Fitz said, now very intent on one of her throw pillows. “Just that Jane had a friend that they thought I'd like. Darcy's much too interested in my life, really. Keeps on making me profiles on dating websites and bringing in lasagna to fatten me up. I wouldn't mind, if she didn't keep on burning it.”

Jemma had the sneaking sensation that Jane and Darcy had been planning something behind her back but she let it drop and went on to the next item on her list: awkward particulars of their first date. All first dates were awkward, after all, and hers most of all. No one would buy a first date that went smoothly. 

“Do you want to trip, be late, accidentally order something too spicy, or spill soy sauce all over the table?” Jemma asked him. “I'm compiling accidents for our first date.”

Fitz threw the pen back at her.

Step #3: Obtain a cute couple picture for photographic evidence.

“Fitz, get in the frame and put your arm around me.”

“It just looks staged if we do it like that.”

“Normal couples do this all the time. Hugging, looking cute, actually being willing to touch each other...”

“Well, we're not a normal couple, are we?”

“That's hardly the point!”

“And I'm certainly not posing with that wooden spoon. Are we meant to making dinner together? People usually don't stop in the midst of making dinner to take a picture for the purposes of faking a relation--”

“ _Fitz!_ ”

Step #4: Take a breath, drink copious amounts of tea, and send a prayer up to the patron saint of fake relationships that the plan works.

He was late to the movies too. Luckily, Jemma had told him that it started thirty minutes earlier than it really did. “I'm so sorry,” he gasped out. “The subway broke down and I was stuck across from this woman with a crazed Chihuahua that I'm pretty sure was trying to go for my coffee and then my Metro Card ran out of money and--”

“The movie hasn't started yet,” she informed him. “I knew you would be late.”

“You're diabolical. And brilliant,” he added as an afterthought and slipped his arm around her waist. Jemma stiffened for a moment—they'd never gone over physical boundaries—but then relaxed against his side. Fitz was nice and warm, after all, and a surprisingly solid support.

“That's why you like me so much,” she said and planted a quick kiss on his cheek. Two could play at that game, she thought with a certain amount of satisfaction as she watched Fitz flush. She turned to Daisy and Trip, who were watching with wide eyes, and leaned into Fitz's side a little more. “Fitz, this is my roommate Daisy and her boyfriend Trip. Daisy, Trip, this is my boyfriend Leo Fitz.”

“Nice to meet you,” Trip said with a little nod. Jemma wasn't entirely sure but that might have just been the bro-nod of approval. That tilt of the head downwards, the direct eye contact... Trip had _never_ given any of her boyfriends the sacred bro-nod of approval before. 

“So how did you and Jemma meet?” Daisy chimed in.

“I work at the same university as Jane Foster. She and her assistant Darcy cornered me in line at the campus Starbucks one day and wouldn't let me leave until I agreed to go on a date with their friend. They'd been working on me for months, actually, so I didn't take too much convincing. Plus the guy behind me in line was about to brain me with his messenger bag if I took any longer. Jane and Darcy picked their moment well,” Fitz said thoughtfully. Jemma reminded herself that as Fitz's real, genuine girlfriend she definitely had heard this story before and refused to let her jaw drop. 

“Was that story real?” she whispered to him while they were standing in line for popcorn.

“Maybe,” he mumbled. 

She was going to have a serious talk with Jane and Darcy about this. _Soon._

After the movie, Daisy and Trip suggested going out for drinks and considering that all she and Fitz had had to do during the movie was occasionally whisper snarky comments to each other, Jemma thought that she could risk it. They ended up picking a dark paneled, decidedly unhip pub where Fitz ordered massive amounts of French fries, Jemma made faces at him and stole his fries anyway, Daisy tried to outdrink the bachelorette party seated three tables away from them, and Fitz and Trip got involved in an intense game of darts.

“It's all about aerodynamics,” Fitz told her solemnly, leaning over the table. He was three beers in and still beating Trip at darts. She was impressed in spite of herself. “Physics an' all.”

“What are you competing for?” Jemma asked and dipped another one of his fries in Dijon mustard.

“Eternal glory, obviously. And loser buys the next round.” Fitz said happily and headed back over to the dartboard, only pausing to grin back over his shoulder at her. Jemma blew him a kiss to keep their cover going. (Fitz's face when she did only made it better.)

“You seem happy,” Daisy said quietly from beside her. “Really happy.”

“I guess I am. It's still early days but...I feel good about this one.” Jemma kept her eyes down and traced patterns in the condensation on her beer glass. She had been happy tonight, when she thought about it, the kind of uncomplicated happy that she'd never had in any of her previous relationships. With Fitz, she didn't have to worry about whether or not he'd text back or if she said or did or wore the wrong thing. If she argued with him, he argued right back and five minutes later they'd be fine again. Of course, that was because it wasn't a real relationship. They had an arrangement, Jemma sternly reminded herself. That was all.

Later that night, when she came back to their apartment after a pretend prolonged goodbye with Fitz, Daisy looked up at her in surprise. “I thought you'd be spending the night at Fitz's.”

“No, we, um...we haven't yet. Waiting for the right moment,” Jemma lied. How had she never bothered to address the fact of their sex life? Any couple going out for as long as she planned to prolong this scheme would surely be having sex. (Unless Fitz was keeping some kind of chastity vow...she didn't think he would go for that, strangely enough.)

“Okay.” Daisy raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I'm disappointed in you, Jemma Simmons. Not even taking the chance to find out what a real Scotsman wears beneath his kilt.”

Jemma closed her door. Pointedly. Later that night, she texted Fitz: _In about two weeks, we need to have a sleepover._

_What for?_

_To convince everyone that we're sleeping together. I hope you have a comfortable couch._

 

The next challenge was Phil. First of all, convincing Phil that she and Fitz were actually together. Second of all, getting Phil to approve of him. (She was still convinced that Phil had burnt Will's bacon and undercooked his eggs on purpose that one time.) She made Fitz go through flashcards the night before they were scheduled to have brunch with Daisy, Trip, and Bobbi (and Hunter, if he and Bobbi were back on again) at the Playground. 

“I think I'm good on the classic cars. Might need to go through the John Le Carre novels again, but definitely pitch perfect on anything to do with Star Wars,” Fitz said from what was rapidly becoming his position on her couch. Initially, Jemma had been opposed to him spending time in her apartment but he'd argued that it was the perfect opportunity to practice. (Really, she suspected that he liked her excellent selection of snacks.) He turned out not to be bad company, actually. While she was writing, or trying to write, or frenetically moving index cards around on her plot bulletin board or googling completely irrelevant facts that might come in use three books later, he would sit on her couch with a stack of problem sets that needed grading and a massive mug of tea. He started making tea for her too after a while, milky and sweet and usually accompanied by a stack of ginger biscuits. (“It's what any steady boyfriend would do, Jemma. You're not the only one who can plan.”) It was quiet. Peaceful. Very nearly domestic.

“What about all-American hero Steven Grant Rogers?”

“I don't think that all-American hero Steven Grant Rogers, famous for saving all of New York City from a crazed neo-Nazi, having a bromance for the ages with his best friend Bucky Barnes, and maintaining a short-lived but dramatic feud with billionaire Tony Stark that probably made Coulson tear his hair out and that I promised Daisy not to mention, will casually come up in conversation,” he said dryly and flicked the index cards across her coffee table. 

“You'd be surprised,” Daisy put in from the doorway to the kitchen. 

“Why is it so important that Coulson like me anyway?” Fitz asked, frowning. “Do you get banned from the diner until Jemma dumps me if he doesn't like me? Because I can't have that hanging over my head.”

“Well, Jemma's dad is across the ocean and mine got his license revoked for medical malpractice, so he's filling in for the moment,” Daisy told Fitz. “Phil has a great series of dad jokes. And he probably would only stop giving us free coffee refills if he didn't like you. Which is bad, but not nearly as bad as losing pancake privileges.”

“Sometimes he has peanut butter cup ones,” Jemma said dreamily. “Terrible for you, but what a way to go. If he likes you, he'll give us some.”

“I'm glad that Jemma finally brought you in,” Phil said the next morning, beaming paternally down at both of them. “I've heard all about you.” Then he pulled out his legal pad and a pencil. “So tell me, Fitz, what do you do for a living?”

“I'm a professor at Columbia. Engineering. I can show you some of my publications if you'd like?” Fitz offered and pulled a massive sheaf of papers out of his messenger bag. “Proof that I'm a real professor.” 

Coulson actually took the journals and then moved on to the next item on his list. “Now tell me, do you have any notable investments? Real estate? A functional car? A savings account that could provide for a future family?”

He only stopped after a series of well-placed interjections from Bobbi, one very significant look from Daisy, and Jemma's attempt to face plant into her toast. Phil was still beaming when he bustled away from their table, however, and the arrival of an extra order of pancakes and bacon cooked exactly the way that Fitz likes it suggested that Phil approved. And just in case Jemma didn't get the message, he insisted on taking a photo of Jemma and Fitz for his customer wall. 

“I can't believe that Phil liked you,” she said after they left the diner and headed over to Bobbi's comic book store. Hunter hadn't been able to make it that morning—probably too hungover—but he and Bobbi seemed to have made up over the course of brunch and the other woman was now insisting that he meet Fitz.

“I'm very likable! What kind of men have you been dating, anyway? Phil looked so relieved when I walked in." 

“I was dating perfectly adequate men. But none quite like you,” she admitted after a minute. Fitz grinned at her, squeezing her hand tight, and for a moment she wondered if his smile was real. 

Hunter loved Fitz, of course. Five minutes in, he was already trying to convince Fitz to join his and Trip's formerly defunct bar trivia team and Fitz accepted far too eagerly. (Jemma decided she didn't need to mention that Hunter and Trip had finished dead last in every single competition they'd entered.) In fact, she was beginning to suspect that all her friends had entered into a conspiracy to unilaterally approve of her new boyfriend. Daisy asked when Fitz was coming over again, Trip tried to get him to join in on a juice cleanse, Bobbi reserved new comic books for him, Hunter tried nickname after nickname out on Fitz, and Mack spent a full thirty minutes discussing the dire state of her car with him. Even May, after Fitz came to pick Jemma up from the gym one afternoon, silently and approvingly nodded in their general direction as they went out the door.

She just didn't know how they'd react when she and Fitz broke up.


	3. Maybe Jemma Simmons Has a Boyfriend

“You know, we probably should kiss,” she said, about a month into her and Fitz's pretend relationship. “No one's caught us making out yet and I think Daisy might be getting suspicious.”

“Because we're not all over each other like a pair of spider monkeys?” Fitz snorted. 

“Because I told Daisy that we had sex and it was mind-blowing. We have to back up the story.”

“So in your head, I was mind-blowing?”

“Well, you had to be! For story purposes,” Jemma added quickly. She wondered what he was really like in bed. Just as a thought experiment, of course. He wasn't particularly muscled yet evidence suggested that he might be good with his hands. Maybe she could ask Darcy what his reputation was like around the department...she wrenched her thoughts back to the present. She could seek out office gossip later. Practice kissing needed to happen now, before Daisy got back from krav maga.

“Anyway, we should practice.” She pushed herself up from her position on the carpet and positioned herself next to Fitz on the couch expectantly. He shut his book and gave her an odd look that presumably meant “right now?” Jemma nodded. Fitz gulped and leaned in.

Their first kiss was awful. Clashing teeth, poorly positioned noses, and elbows everywhere. Their second kiss was marginally better: simple, careful, almost sweet. For their third, Fitz pulled her onto his lap, arm going around her waist and that was that. Jemma very nearly protested until she realized the excellent access this gave her to messing up his hair, despite his mumbled complaints, and promptly set about doing just that, one hand buried in his curls and the other holding his tightly. For a former child prodigy and current socially deficient engineering professor, Fitz was good at this. Just the right amount of pressure, non-chapped lips...Fitz licked into her mouth, Jemma nearly forgot to breathe, and was forced to concede that, just maybe, he was objectively good at this.

“That's a communal couch, you know,” a voice said from the front door and Fitz and Jemma broke apart to see Daisy watching them with a smirk. “I eat popcorn on it every Saturday night.”

“Please,” Jemma huffed and hastily climbed off Fitz's lap. “It's not like you and Trip haven't done much worse on it.”

 

“So was it good?” Darcy asked eagerly. She'd cornered Jemma as soon as she'd entered Jane and Darcy's apartment for their regular tea and gossip session and was currently blocking her view of any of the steaming mugs of tea Jane had misleadingly promised. “Daisy said that she caught you guys making out on the couch.”

“It wasn't real making out. It was practice,” Jemma insisted.

“Practice having your tongue down his throat?”

“It—it was good, all right? Much better than I expected,” Jemma mumbled and felt herself blush. “I'm not quite sure how to feel about it.”

“I told you, Jane!” Darcy called across the room. Jane, currently engrossed in studying a star map, looked up to shoot a proud look at Jemma. “I knew they'd like each other if we just got them in the same room.”

“I don't like him like _that_. Some days I don't even like him at all,” Jemma argued. “He argues with me about my characters, you know. The other day he actually tried to claim that the Nagoni wouldn't declare war on the Trillians over an artifact because their pacifist impulses would overwhelm the importance of their cultural—Anyway, none of my other boyfriends ever tried anything like that. 

“None of your other boyfriends have ever lasted this long,” Jane cheerfully pointed out, folding the star map away. “It's remarkable.”

“All of my other boyfriends have been _real_.”

“Real, pretend. Seems like the line has gotten awfully thin,” Darcy said and perched herself on top of a lab stool. “Take it from an expert in weird relationships.”

“You and Bucky meeting because he was putting out a fire in your kitchen is hardly on the same level as pretending to date someone. Look, can we just...can we not talk about it?” Jemma said with a sigh. She'd always liked things neat and orderly, everything and everyone slotted into their own proper space in her head. Potential boyfriend material had a long checklist of qualities, almost none of which Fitz possessed. There were routines and requirements and steps that she followed in a careful order. Fitz didn't want to have candle-lit dinners at tiny French restaurants (“didn't you read that article about how they make foie gras, Jemma? Disgusting stuff”) and his taste in flowers was quotidian at best and he got more scared of spiders than she did. But he made her laugh and smile and occasionally throw up her hands in exasperation with him. And he had a way of making her feel awfully real.

“Look, tell me about the latest department gossip instead,” Jemma said firmly. She suspected that she had been silent for far too long, as Jane and Darcy were both shooting her strange looks. “Did those graduate students get caught in the planetarium again?”

Darcy launched into a long and complicated story, Jane brought all three mugs of tea over and managed to spill less than half of them, and they both talked her into staying for dinner. Everything was fine and yet Jemma couldn't shake the feeling that Jane and Darcy had been discussing her before her arrival.

“You know, sometimes things change from what you expected,” Jane told her while Darcy was in the kitchen going through Jane's drawer of take-out menus. (The last time that Jane had tried to cook, Darcy had met her firefighter boyfriend.) “And that's not a bad thing.”

“Are you talking about Fitz or about the plot of my next novel? Because I'm not sure which is more puzzling.” Jemma rubbed anxiously at the back of her neck. Her first draft was due in two weeks and she still had a hundred and fifty pages left to go, an evil dictator to defeat, a key secondary character to kill off, and a love triangle to resolve. 

“Both. Neither. Tell me about the book if you want to.” Jane tucked one leg underneath the other and leaned back against the couch, tilting her body to face Jemma. “Or not. Give me a book recommendation. Tell me your thoughts on the crisis in Sokovia or how your latest culinary experiment is going, or whether or not you're finally going to adopt a cat. We can talk about whatever you want and I promise that, unless you want me to, I won't breathe a word about your love life.”

Jemma hugged her so hard that Jane squeaked.

 

Three days after her dinner with Jane and Darcy, Jemma had twenty pages written, ten thrown away and absolutely no progress in the right direction. Her heroine remained torn between two men, the evil dictator Snagle was still continuing his reign of terror, and a significant number of characters remained to be killed. Staring up at the ceiling and taking another sip of her cold tea, Jemma wondered about the possibility of running away to the Seychelles, changing her name, and hiding from her publisher for the rest of her life. It wasn't that she didn't know what needed to happen. In fact, she had a neatly diagrammed list of plot points currently taped to the ceiling in prime staring position. She just had no idea how it was all going to happen. 

Jemma threw a pencil up at the ceiling, where it promptly failed to stay there and came whizzing back down at her. Sadly, throwing her laptop wasn't an option. 

“Writers' block, still?” Daisy asked sympathetically as she grabbed her coat from the hall closet. Jemma just groaned in response and Daisy exited rapidly. She'd been told that she was awful to be around when she had writer's block but she liked to think that she wasn't quite that terrible. Incident with the orange chicken aside.

She had about a page and a half written when someone rang the doorbell. “Go away!” she shouted in its general direction. The doorbell didn't listen.

“It's Fitz. Daisy texted me saying that you were sulking and I thought that any fake boyfriend worth his salt would stop by with snacks and alcohol. I've got a movie too,” he said hopefully. Against her better judgment, Jemma let him in.

“So can I flip a coin to decide which guy she ends up with?” Fitz asked eagerly after she'd explained her dilemma to him, lying next to her on the carpet. 

“Absolutely not.”

“Spin a wheel to see which character dies?”

“Nope.”

“Can I at least have a minor character named after me that dies a horrible death?”

“None of my characters are _minor_ ,” Jemma said haughtily. However appealing Fitz's smile was and however determined his efforts to make her laugh, she had decided to be in a bad mood and refused to let him deter her. Writers got to be temperamental and moody, didn't they?

“Do you want a drink then?” Fitz offered and propped himself on his side so he was facing her, blue eyes bright and so very close. Jemma swallowed. Hard. They'd let a few other people catch them kissing but they'd never let it get to the point that it had the first time. Besides, those had all been carefully planned, calculated for maximum impact and usually set in public places where, if she had done something foolish like push him up against the nearest wall and kiss the breath out of him, people would have certainly objected. Here, it was just him and her and the uncomfortable tangle of feelings in her chest. 

“Depends on what you brought,” she said and pushed herself up to lean back against the couch so he wouldn't be quite so close.

“Two red, three white, and vodka.” Fitz grinned wickedly.   
“Pass me the red.” Jemma stuck her hand out. 

 

“You know, when I first met you, I wasn't sure whether or not I liked you,” Jemma told him a bottle of wine later. They'd moved up to the couch, her legs stretched across his lap and his hands tracing gentle circles on her ankles, and Jemma was too supremely comfortable to even consider all the boundaries they were probably breaking. “You were skinny and messy and extremely opinionated.”

“See, I knew I liked you right away. Right from the moment I saw you waiting for me, tapping your foot like you were about to tell me off...I had a good feeling about you. Turns out that I was right,” Fitz said softly.

“Really? You did? Do you still like me now?” Jemma tried not to fidget waiting for his answer. Of course, she and Fitz got on fairly well. They'd had to, in order to make the scheme work, and she had to admit that her life was significantly more pleasant not just because her friends had finally stopped trying to interfere in her dating life, but because he had happened to be in it.

“Very much. Probably more than I should,” he admitted. “And I know that this is a strange situation, but there's just something about you that makes me--”

She kissed him before he could say anything else. Because if he did, she'd probably end up doing something stupid like proposing to him on the spot or pulling him into her bedroom and not leaving the room for three days. Because no matter how much she loved words, they always seemed to make things more complicated and she'd never met anyone better than Fitz at tossing her words back at her. Kissing was simple, an easy give-and-take. Fitz's mouth on hers, his hands holding her close, the whisper of his breath and the steady thump of his heart a language she knew exactly how to decipher. 

“You know, this couch has probably had enough scandalous things happen on it,” she whispered. 

Fitz immediately broke away, hair mussed, lips bright red from her lipstick, and blinking at her. “Right. Sorry. I--”

“What I meant is that it's been far too long since something scandalous happened in my bedroom.”

 

Jemma woke up with a pounding headache and a sinking feeling in her stomach that felt like bad decisions. (And the wine, but mostly bad decisions.) What if Fitz had realized that actually they weren't that compatible at all and bolted? What if it had been the wine and the fact of pretending for so long that had made it happen and not anything real between them? Or, worse of all, what if it was something real, something spun-glass fragile and ready to collapse if anyone so much as breathed on it, and it didn't work out? What if they fought horribly and—Jemma couldn't possibly consider this properly lying in the same bed as Fitz, radiating more heat than any of her blankets as he slept with his arm tucked snugly around her. So she fled her own bedroom. It was the logical thing to do. (This was precisely why she'd never taken up writing romance novels.)

She was nursing a mug of mint tea and dry toast in a coffee shop that none of her friends would ever think to look for her in when a shadow fell across her table and she looked up to see Fitz. “How—how did you find me?” she blurted out.

“It took a while. Had to come up with an algorithm—does that sound creepy?” he asked anxiously. “I didn't mean it to. Jane helped with the algorithm and everything...anyway, I just wanted to find you and talk about it.”

“We had sex, Fitz. People have sex all the time and it doesn't—Look, we had a plan and it worked really well and maybe we got a little carried away but that doesn't have to change anything if you don't want it to. You can pretend to move to Australia in another month or two and I'll play sad music and lock myself in my bedroom for a few days and we'll just...” Jemma trailed off and crumbled a piece of toast between her fingers. Truth was, she'd spent a significant part of the morning picturing her life without Fitz and it seemed a little...gray. Dismal. Downright depressing.

“Do you want everything to go back to normal? Because I know I don't.” Fitz knelt down beside her chair and slid his hand toward hers, just close enough for her to grab on if she wanted to.

“Maybe. I don't think so. I don't know! I just—I've had a lot of bad relationships and it wasn't always them messing it up. I'm not good at this, Fitz,” she said urgently. “I had to get a fake boyfriend just to get my friends to stop bothering me about my dating life.”

“The last date I went on before you, she said she had to go to the bathroom halfway through the appetizers and fled. I had to eat all the Indian food myself. Not too bad when you think about it—but the important thing is that I'm not great at this either. But maybe we can be great together. Look, why don't we just--” He glanced around the coffee shop, then doubtfully down at Jemma's dry toast. “Why don't we go and have breakfast? No elaborate plans, no flashcards, just breakfast.”

“Breakfast sounds good. I think—I think I can do that,” she said slowly. Breakfast somewhere across town, where no one knew them and it could just be her and Fitz sitting at a table and talking. Just a girl and the boy who made her heart do ridiculous things in her chest. 

“It can be like the second version of our first date? And I won't even be late this time,” Fitz teased. “You won't have to do that foot tapping thing you do, when your lips are all pursed like you've swallowed a lemon.”

“I do not do that!” Jemma sat up, indignant.

“You do. You look adorable when you're doing it,” Fitz added quickly when she glared at him. “Like you always do.”

“You're incorrigible.”

“You like it,” he retorted.

“Only because I'm just as incorrigible as you are. Come on,” Jemma said and held her hand out to him. “Let's go have breakfast. I know a great place that does two kinds of meat, pancakes, and hash browns on one plate and has a three-page long tea menu.”

“As long as you let me pay this time. It's first date etiquette!” he protested after she shot him a look.

“Fitz, this isn't our first date. This is our...” She paused for a moment to calculate. “Twenty-second, I think. Possibly twenty-third, depending on how you calculate.”

“All right. So, Jemma Simmons,” Fitz beamed as he said her name, smile wide enough to split his face in two. “Are you ready to go on our twenty-third date?”

“Absolutely.” Jemma slipped her hand through his and leaned up to kiss him, long and hard and quite possibly improper for a coffee shop. She couldn't bring herself to care. Because she and Fitz would eat breakfast and lunch and dinner and possibly a few overpriced high teas and watch movies on her couch and take picnics out to the park and argue and make up and kiss a hundred thousand times. Because together, they would figure it out. And just maybe, together, it would be perfect.


End file.
